"The gun problem is related to drugs. I think it's the weapon of choice for some "tough guys" partly because they're glamorized in videos etc. If drugs are the symptom, white collar crime (e.g. lobbyists bribing politicians for their clients) like that seen on Bay Street is the root cause."

Oppenheimer Holdings Inc., a Toronto- based brokerage whose main operations are in the United States, said it paid $4.4-million (U.S.) to settle regulatory probes into money laundering and supervisory failings. The firm said its agreements with the U.S. Treasury Department and New York Stock Exchange concern the "inadequate implementation of policies and procedures," a lack of staffing and training in anti-money laundering and the failure to file suspicious activity reports. Oppenheimer also settled "registration issues" with the National Association of Securities Dealers, it said yesterday in a statement. Separately, the NYSE said it fined Oppenheimer $1.35-million. OPY.NV (TSX) fell 10 cents (Canadian) to $23.15. Bloomberg

The Federal NDP Party has received a letter from the RCMP indicating that it has initiated a criminal investigation of the alleged illegal insider trading of income trusts and dividend paying common equities before the Finance Minister Ralph Goodale announcement of no new tax on income trusts and lower taxation of dividends on the evening of November 23rd. Both the Federal NDP and Conservative Parties are tonight calling for the resignation of Ralph Goodale from the Finance Minister position. Here is the Conservative Party and NDP Parties' coverage of the matter.

The high profile of the RCMP investigation of Royal Group Technologies exists in large part as a function of Royal's connection with former Ontario finance minister Greg Sorbara. Somewhere a fraud supposedly exists, or if not a fraud something worthy of the full attention of the federal government's vaunted Integrated Markets Enforcement Team (IMET).

IMET was announced with great fanfare as the heart of Ottawa's war on corporate crime. It's a war for "a safe economy" promoted by, among others, Bank of Canada governor David Dodge. "Now more than ever before," said Mr. Dodge in a speech to the RCMP published this week, "the law-enforcement community has a critical role to play in strengthening and preserving the security and economic interests of Canada. Now more than ever, the Bank of Canada, the RCMP, and other police agencies across Canada are working together to achieve this goal."

If this sounds a little like a clone of the war on terrorism, it is. A hint of the similarities came Tuesday in a decision by Ontario Justice Ian Nordheimer in the Royal Group case to reject RCMP and Crown attempts to keep the bulk of their Royal Group search warrants secret -- as if the people under investigation were the equivalent of terrorists at the gate.

By insisting on secrecy, the Crown was attempting to put its corporate crime probe on a par with a public interest such as national security. Justice Nordheimer doesn't accept the argument. Nor does he accept various Crown attempts to turn corporate and "white collar cases" into matters that demand terrorist-style secrecy. Obviously trying to set Royal as a precedent, the Crown said: "There is a real and substantial risk that future corporate wrongdoers will learn methods to frustrate co-operation by the victim corporations."

Floating a new concept, the "victim corporation model," the Crown attempted to keep secret its use of a special techniques to secure the co-operation of corporate directors. The overall effect of the RCMP and Crown secrecy, said Nordheimer, was to undermine fundamental freedom and the rights of accused. Even if they are corporate officers, they "have a particular right to know what it is that is being alleged against them."

There's much more to this case. Parts of Justice Nordheimer's decision ordering the Crown to produce search warrant documents -- serve as a useful starting point to understanding exactly what the government and the RCMP are up to in their war to secure a safe economy.

Don't ask Mounties to get their man if he is connected to the Liberal party

By Licia Corbella

Back in 1998, I wrote how I didn't trust the RCMP as a corporation anymore when it came to investigating anything to do with the federal Liberals.

I wrote the same thing again in 2001 and 2002, each time listing a whole new host of reasons why.

The sponsorship scandal served to tie a pretty ribbon around this statement.

After all, the RCMP is now given the task of investigating its own corruption and that of its politically corrupt benefactors.

Clearly, such an arrangement is an enormous conflict of interest.

It's important to state that individual RCMP officers still deserve and receive my respect -- and that of most Canadians.

But consider what a friend said to me a couple of days ago.

We were discussing the Gurmant Grewal affair.

I said something like: "If it's true Grewal was approached by the Liberals to defect prior to the non-confidence vote in the House for a plum political position, instead of just taping his calls and meetings with the Liberals, he should have got the RCMP to do it, then the veracity of his claims would not be questioned."

My friend's response: "The RCMP would have just tipped off the Liberals as to what was happening. The RCMP is a Liberal puppet."

Example after example appears to prove him right.

What's more, how diligently can we expect the RCMP to investigate AdScam when it's known the RCMP helped launder money for the federal Liberals to help Liberal-friendly advertising companies in Quebec, who then funneled the money back into Liberal party coffers?

Federal Auditor General Sheila Fraser unveiled in April 2004 the feds pumped $1.3 million of the $3 million earmarked for the Mounties' 125th anniversary celebration into the coffers of Liberal-friendly ad firms.

In turn, the RCMP deposited its $1.7-million share of the sponsorships in a separate non-government bank account that was discovered by Fraser's probe.

"We were unable to verify the transactions from the Quebec bank account, because some of the supporting documents had been destroyed," the AG report said.

Fraser concluded Crown corporations like the RCMP were used to quietly pour money into the coffers of ad agencies and we've since learned through the inquiry into AdScam, led by Justice John Gomery, that those ad agencies kicked back money to the Liberals by putting Liberal party workers on their payrolls, handing over envelopes filled with tens of thousands of dollars of cash and making "legitimate" donations with taxpayer dollars.

But the RCMP's decline of esteem in the eyes of the Canadian public has been going on throughout the entire 12 years of Liberal rule, long before Fraser's explosive report or Gomery's inquiry.

For 12 years, the RCMP has increasingly flouted the laws of this country and has become the PMO's own private goon squad.

Most of us would be right to assume the Mounties have a mandate to uphold the laws of this country -- not trample them underfoot at the whim of the PM.

However, the investigation into the 1997 APEC summit debacle in which the RCMP abused peaceful Canadian protesters, found the Mounties discarded the rule of law and embraced orders sent from Chretien's office to protect now-deposed Indonesian despot Suharto -- not just from security risks, but from any embarrassment.

Then, in the summer of 1998, the RCMP started building a second road into Chretien's summer cottage in Lac-de-Piles, Que., without obtaining the necessary permits from the municipality.

Even though the misappropriation or stealing of federal money through the feds and Quebec advertising firms was first revealed in 1999, the RCMP did nothing for three years until Fraser asked them to criminally investigate in 2002.

Then, what did the Mounties do?

Instead of using surprise -- though by then you can be sure the players in the scandal had already shredded and destroyed much of the damning evidence -- the RCMP didn't get a search warrant first and then seize all they could.

No, they put out a press release announcing they would look into the $1.6 million in federal contracts awarded to Groupaction Marketing Inc. for writing three virtually identical reports (one of which doesn't even exist) that contained information readily available on the federal government website.

That trial begins this month.

Then there's their investigation into Chretien's Shawinigate scandal -- or, rather, the lack of one.

Documents related to the scandal that implicated Chretien were dismissed by the RCMP, who stated they "couldn't prove the documents weren't forgeries"!

Is it any wonder there's never any real accountability in this country?

Then, as if to prove their bias, the Mounties raided the home and cottage of Francois Beaudoin, the former BDC president who was fired after saying "no" to Chretien and blowing the whistle on the Grand-Mere loan fiasco.

Beaudoin's reputation was restored in a 2003 court case where Quebec Judge Andre Denis lambasted Jean Carle, Chretien's former director of operations who was appointed by Chretien as the bank's senior vice-president of public affairs and Michel Vennat, whom Chretien appointed as the BDC's chairman.

Judge Denis described the testimony of the two men as unreliable and their actions against Beaudoin as "an unspeakable injustice" designed to "break him and ruin his career."

So, the RCMP investigated Beaudoin, but why not Chretien, Carle and Vennat?

Good question, no?

Canadians no longer have much confidence in the Mounties getting their man -- especially if that man has anything to do with the Liberal party.

Individual investors are concerned about whether the RCMP conducts securities investigations based upon complaints brought to it from members of the public. We have now received two recent RCMP communications indicating that the RCMP directs complaints from the public to the provincial securities commissions or the self-regulators and that the RCMP will only investigate matters referred to it from these securities regulators. The first is a letter, which was written to a private & confidential investor advocate by Craig Hannaford, Head of the RCMP Ontario IMET Unit . From this letter, you can see that the RCMP Ontario IMET Unit does not consider matters for investigation unless these have been referred to it from one its participating agencies (Ontario Securities Commission (OSC), Investment Dealers Association (IDA), Mutual Fund Dealers Association (MFDA), Market Regulation Services (MRS). There is a legal reason why the investor advocate's name is blocked in this letter, which I can discuss with you on a private and confidential basis.

The second communication is an e-mail to Jim Roache, an Ottawa investor advocate, from Sgt. Gord Sereda of the RCMP Saskatoon Commercial Crime. This RCMP Commercial Crime Unit has indicated that it will shred all material Mr. Roache sends to his office and that all future evidence pertaining to the fraud and securities offences compiled by deceased whistleblower Kent Shirley are to be sent to the Saskatchewan Financial Services Commission.

Furthermore, the RCMP says it does not need more funding for fraud investigations, even though the fraud units are operating at full capacity and new complaints will soon no longer be received! See this quote from the attached Globe and Mail - White-collar crime a growth industry, committee hears:

"Chief Supt. German, director general of financial crime, told senators that the IMET teams will likely have to turn away some complaints in the future once they hit their full capacity. "The complainant may similarly be turned away by our Commercial Crime Sections, or other local police jurisdictions, as those units often have a very limited capacity to undertake project-status investigations.," he said.

He said he's not looking for more money, because IMETs are properly funded, but there's "a lot of fraud out there and we could do more."

"John Xanthoudakis, founder of Norshield Financial Group, was "beaten up" on Nov. 25 in an assault related to the firm's troubled business dealings, a legal source close to the case confirmed. The attack has received some attention in the Montreal business press." (G&M)

I began handling a few client complaints about bad brokers by suggesting they bypass the IDA, which was recognized as an industry biased trade organization posing as a regulator. I have never seen the IDA punish wrongdoing in the industry, but rather politely "deflect" the complaint. Lawyer John Hollander has some experience with this as well and his comments are worth reading if you can.

I therefore suggested it might be a waste of time and told clients to write to the provincial securities commission as well as the company involved. In each case (involving IDA registered firms) the securities commission simply passed the complaint on to the IDA, saying it was they who had jurisdiction on the matter. WIthout regard for what the Securites Act charges the commisison with, I felt they were abrogating their responsibility totally. I have still yet to obtain a proper answer as to whether they (The IDA) has statuatory powers under the securities act or if they only have powers over registration. See following quote by IDA:

First, let's get the facts straight. The only legislative power the provincial governments "delegate" to the IDA is registration of brokers -- and even that is only delegated in B.C., Alberta and Ontario. The provincial governments do not "delegate" securities industry compliance and enforcement.

So now we have the IDA as known to be masquerading as a regulator, the provincial securities commissions delegating all IDA matters to them, with or without clear statuatory authority, but unarguably without common sense knowledge of the clear conflict of interest.

We end up with total regulatory failure. One hand does not seem to know what the other is even responsible for, and the poor RCMP IMET is looking back and forth at the choices not knowing who to arrest, the crooks, the commissioners, or the lobbiest.

It is time for a national securities regulator, with the old ones being disbanded and recycled into less ethically demanding industries. This stuff is just too important to leave to bureaucrats.

“Corruption isn’t a natural disaster: it is the cold, calculated theft of opportunity from the men, women and children who are least able to protect themselves,” said David Nussbaum, TI’s chief executive. ”Leaders must go beyond lip service and make good on their promises to provide the commitment and resources to improve governance, transparency and accountability.”

This is the heart of the issue retail investors face. It exists in all industries but seems systemic in the financial services industry because of the amount of money at stake.

SIPA published a report in February 2004 with the intent to illustrate the extent of the problem of investors being robbed of their savings due to willful wrongdoing by the financial services industry. The report had some impact. It apparently precipitated David Brown to organize the OSC Investor Town Hall Event. This event allowed investor advocates to speak out and with a crowd of 500 it was apparent there is discontent with the complete lack of investor protection.

Although there are many issues we need to focus on the fundamental issues and not get distracted by industry declarations of reefing rules, developing improved guidelines and recommended practices, and mouthing that investor protection is important.

The fact is the present regulatory system is incapable of providing investor protection. Seniors and widows are being robbed at an alarming rate.

Investor advocates need to evolve a strategy for pursuing important issues in an organized fashion if ever headway can be made.

There have been many initiatives but they tend to fall by the wayside. The Internet should be a powerful tool to empower investors.

More and more investors are speaking out. We need to speak out in concert.